Annette Crosbie and Richard Wilson star as Margaret and Victor Meldrew in the BBC television comedy series One Foot In The Grave

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I have been ostracised, briefly, by my family for “losing it” over their collective inability to refill the deep freeze ice tray.

“Watch!” I ranted, red-faced, holding the tray under a cold tap and swilling the tupperware honeycomb under the cold-tap. “Done!” I announced triumphantly. “And it took two seconds.”

“Two. five,” said my son, chief suspect in the ‘Cubegate’ scandal, pressing his thumb dramatically on the stopwatch.

Am I at fault for flinging the tupperware cube-maker on our polished wooden front room floor and bellowing, ‘what’s the bloody point?’, or are they for failing to refill the anaemic plastic resepticle, then place the thing back in the fridge?

A straw poll has decided three to one – my son’s girlfriend was allowed a vote on the grounds she was shaken by my outburst – that I over-reacted. As my wife so eloquently put it: “Have a word with yourself.”

How quickly she forgets throwing, when gripped by mutinous hormones, a can of Heinz soup at Yours Truly for failing to switch on the immersion heater when requested.

“You,” she warned, “are in danger of becoming a grumpy old man.”

I can’t wait, frankly. I was a grumpy young man and it didn’t work. A girl once finished with me for interrupting the ambience of a romantic woodland walk to retrieve a stick to stir paint with.

As an old man, you can get away with that behaviour.

Such are the crises that befall run-of-the-mill couples. The working man’s wedding vows should read: “For better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness or health, landing light left on or not, toilet flushed or unflushed....”

We have rowed over who ate my yoghurt, during which I protested: “I was saving that.”

“For what?” laughed my family.

“I was saving that pot until the very last seconds of its sell-by date.” At my age, that’s the closest one gets to living dangerously. It’s the culinary equivalent of a bunjee jump. I also play Russian roulette with Revels. I have a hazelnut allergy.

We have rowed about wallpaper, hanging-up clothes, even the cost of bacon, but never about other men and women. I was always too busy checking all the lights in the house were off to consider an affair.

In any case, my wife gives me a £5 allowance each day, which severely restricts how much fun I can cram into waking hours. A woman who can be wooed and bedded by a Big Mac is probably not the sort you’d take home to meet mother.

When Colin decided to tie the knot for a second time, he chose modern, more meaningful vows.

He announced dramatically in church:

I promise to love and care for you, and I will try in every way to be worthy of your love.

I will always be honest with you, kind, patient and forgiving.

I promise to try to be on time.

But most of all, I promise to be a true and loyal friend to you.

I love you.

As they walked from the musty church into bright sunlight he hissed to his beloved: “You’re telling me you might have left the grill on? For God’s sake, woman...”

The perils of not being satisfied with one’s domestic lot was recently underlined by a divorced colleague.

He said: “When I was 16, I wanted a girlfriend. When I was 17, I got a girlfriend, but she wasn’t passionate enough. When I was 19 and at college, I found a passionate girl, but she was too emotional – everything was a drama, so we finished.

“When I was 25, I met a very sensible woman, but she was too boring. When I was 28, I found a very exciting woman, but simply couldn’t keep up with her. When I was 35, I married a thoroughly professional and very ambitious woman – so ambitious she took me to the cleaners during a bitter divorce.”